Learning Management Skills Posted on February 28, 2008 Peter Salovey (bio) describes how he learned how to manage by watching mentors like Judith Rodin and Richard Levin.

One of the challenges in running a research lab for the first time, let alone in being a department chair or a dean, is if you've had a traditional academic career like I've had you've never sat down and been taught management skills or leadership skills or even general people skills. You've learned them intuitively in some ways. I always joke that I'm running a big operation here in the Yale College Dean's office, and not a person around me nor I have ever been taught how to manage anything.

But I think one has to be open to learning those skills, and you can learn them in a lot of different ways. For me I think it's watching other people who seem to be quite good at it. But to watch what it is they do that allows them to successfully work with other people and when they need to manage or lead other people.

And I've been very lucky. I've had those kinds of role models in my life. My dissertation research was done with Judy Rodin when she was a faculty member here at Yale before she moved into administration at Yale. And she was someone who really knew how to manage a large team of people, and I could watch how she did it and take away some skills from her. Now as a dean I work for a president of a university, Richard Levin, who is one of the longer-serving university presidents in the country and, I believe, now the longest-serving Ivy League President, and he has excellent people skills and a very effective way of managing.

So I think you have to be open to it. I sometimes run into students in my own lab who say, "The reason I became a psychologist or the reason I want to be a researcher or the reason I want to teach is because I don't want to be a manager. I don't want to be a leader. I'm not a manager." And I think that's a mistaken viewpoint. It's not that you necessarily have to have a traditional management career working in industry or what have you, but those skills are going to be important. And I think constantly feeling that you can pick up those skills by watching others and by improving yourself I think is an important perspective.

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